


Three People Who Didn't Get It, and One Who Did

by amusewithaview



Series: Have Daemon, Will Travel [3]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Daemons, SHIELD Liaison Darcy Lewis, Witch Darcy Lewis, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-04 04:53:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's tough being a twenty-something witch in a modern world.</p><p>Tougher still, when everyone expects your daemon to fly away (Darcy was always more of a homebody).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Person the first: Mr. Fletcher

**Author's Note:**

> So...daemons. The wiki explanation is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dæmon_(His_Dark_Materials). I'm going off of what I remember from reading the books for the witch stuff, and cobbling together my own bits and pieces to make this up as I go along.

1\. Mr. Fletcher

Bob settled on a Thursday, near midnight, in the middle of a storm.

Darcy was sitting in the kitchen with her mother, her aunt Tessa, and Iona when it happened. There hadn't been any particular fanfare leading up to the moment. No big pivotal events in her life, no sudden decisions about the future, nothing at all that would indicate that _tonight was the night_. Bob had been going through his usual daily cycle of shapes: screech owl, luna moth, peregrine falcon, etc. He hadn't given any indication that he knew what was coming.

It was abrupt, it was final, it brought Tessa and mother's heads around faster than a sudden curse.

“Huh,” Tessa said, leaning forward a little and bracing her elbows on the kitchen table, “not what I expected from you, darling.”

“He's lovely,” her mother said approvingly.

“What?” Darcy had to ask, she was busy at the stove, making popcorn the old-fashioned way (“No, dear, the old-fashioned way involved an actual open flame.” “Mom, c'mon, you know they have _actual machines_ built just for this now, right?”), and so she wasn't even the first to see Bob's final form.

When she _did_ turn around, what greeted her was a large, _really_ large, bird of prey.

“Bob appears to be a golden eagle,” Tessa informed her, still eyeballing the daemon.

“You mean he's – you're – this is it?” Darcy asked weakly.

Bob shifted awkwardly from foot-to-foot on his perch on the back of Darcy's chair, “Yes.”

“Huh,” said Darcy, “not quite what I was expecting.”

“I'll let you look up the pertinent information,” Tessa informed her graciously. “These things always mean more when you do them for yourself.” She frowned, “You don't have any large papers or exams coming up, do you?”

Darcy shook her head, still staring at her daemon.

“Oh, good,” she turned back to her sister, “Canada?”

“Of course,” Darcy's mother replied, “where else?”

One week later she was back at school, and everyone was staring at her. Conversations died off when she came near, teachers watched her with mingled confusion and concern and everyone touched their daemons as she passed. Even crotchety old Mr. Fletcher, the History teacher, reached for his scorpion daemon when she came into class. No-one said anything to her, though. Darcy couldn't be sure whether their silence was caused by fear of her, or of her daemon.

Bob was pretty badass, if she did say so herself. Even if she still wasn't really sure what part of her screamed _golden eagle_. Her mom seemed to think it fit, and even aunt Tessa (though a little surprised) didn't make too much of it, Iona took it all in with her usual aplomb.

Still, the silence was more than a little daunting. Darcy took her usual seat in the back of the class, ignoring everyone but Bob – as was her usual habit. Most of her teachers had seemed content to let her be, but Fletcher... well, Fletcher had always had it out for her.

"We'll go home and watch the movie after school," she whispered to him.

"History is more interesting when I can _see_ it," Bob reluctantly agreed.

Mr. Fletcher slammed his book against the side of his desk, making everyone in the room save his daemon jump. “Miss Lewis, if you cannot pay attention to the lesson, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Or,” he continued, with a nasty little smile on his face, “If _Bob_ is the one distracting you, perhaps _he_ should leave.”

There was a collective gasp from the students at the suggestion, and Darcy felt her throat close up. No-one stuck up for her, though. Nobody said a thing. They all just stared at her and her daemon, waiting to see how she would react.

“Well, Miss Lewis?”

Bob shrieked, mantling his wings threateningly as Darcy slipped out of her chair to stand beside it.

“This is discrimination,” she said firmly. “It's discrimination, and unconstitutional, and _wrong_. You wouldn't ask anyone else to send their daemon out and if you ever say anything like that again I'll – I'll,” she couldn't think of anything to say, but Bob finished her threat for her by swooping down from her shoulder and across the twenty feet that would take him to the front of the classroom, landing on Fletcher's desk with one sharply-taloned foot oh-so-close to his Bedelia.

Everyone stared at Darcy and Bob and the distance between them. Fletcher's nasty smile didn't go away, though he did go pale, and Darcy realized that this is what he'd wanted. _This_ is what her classmates had been waiting for, some tangible proof of her difference.

Bob awkwardly flapped back to her shoulder and didn't leave her side for the rest of the day.


	2. Person the second: Jane Foster

2\. Jane Foster

College is a revelation for Darcy. She applies to places all over the country, but _south_ is where she feels the pull the most. The same sense tells her _not yet_ and so she goes to Culver University in Virginia, a place that's been in the news off and on for the last few years and keeps popping up on all her favorite conspiracy theory message boards. Something about science experiments gone horribly wrong and military intervention and the Jolly Green Giant, all carefully (but poorly) hushed up. She's never been particularly interested in studying science or the natural world when she's already got such an inherent sense for it. It's too difficult to reconcile what the classroom teaches with what she feels every day.

She thinks she'll study something like the liberal arts, or philosophy, maybe theater.

She decides not to tell anyone that she's a witch.

Well, the admissions board knows. It's probably part of the reason that Darcy is accepted (although her application essay and portfolio are kickass), there aren't many witches in academia. Few see the point of it, but Darcy is a bit of an odd duck, always has been.

So, Culver. Where she doesn't tell anyone she's a witch. Where Bob gets a few odd looks, mostly due to his size and implicit ferocity, but people are accepting. Where she can be _Darcy:_ the college student, the culture studies-women's studies- _political science_ major.

It's...freeing. Freeing in a way that she's never experienced before, not even flying with Bob, nothing between her and the ground but a slender branch. He loves it, too. He loves the debates in the classrooms, he loves the people, he loves the ideas. He loves learning, always has, sometimes even more than she does. They like to hole themselves up in an upper corner of the library, near to the stairs, where Bob can watch everyone while he dictates her lit theory essays to her (she hates analysis, always has and always will).

“Do you ever miss home?” she asks him, one lazy Sunday.

“Sometimes,” he admits, flipping his wings and resettling them. He's perched on an odd bit of molding on the library wall that might have once been intended as a perch, they'll never really know, but even if it was it wasn't intended for a daemon of Bob's size. He jumps down onto the table so that he's facing her, fixing her with his golden-eyed stare. “I miss knowing that I could go flying whenever and wherever I wanted to. I miss Iona's stories and Beriel's lectures. Only _sometimes,_ ” he adds hastily.

“You could, you know.”

“Could what?”

“Go flying, if you really wanted to,” Darcy blurts, looking down and biting her lip.

Bob hops forward to nip at her ear gently, “I know.”

She's reaching the end of her senior year when her advisor reminds her of her science requirement. After a few minutes of her poleaxed stare he points out that alternative means of fulfilling the requirement are both acceptable and encouraged – he means internships, not anything sleazy, he's just socially inept in an awkward and adorable sort of way that makes Darcy want to pet him. His lizard daemon (she's never taken the time to actually look up Kriseis's species) is equally socially maladjusted and rarely even acknowledges the students he meets with.

(Darcy considers it a mark of high consideration that she even gets to know Kriseis's name.)

“In fact, I know of a few researchers looking for an intern.”

“...I know nothing about science, like, really.”

“It's fine, they'll train you in everything you need to know.”

Darcy is, if nothing else, the sort who will always look a gift horse in the mouth: “Why aren't you passing this opportunity on to someone who's, you know, actually _interested_ in science?”

“Well,” he hems and haws and eventually admits that the research that Dr. Foster is most into is the sort that gets good scientists laughed out of the community. No aspiring physicist would touch it with a ten foot pole, but they really do need the help and can't afford to offer much in the way of a stipend. “It's out in New Mexico,” he finishes, giving her an unsure look like he's not sure whether or not that'll be yet another detractor.

_South_ says Darcy's other sense and _it's time._

“I'll take it,” she says, and Bob's wings perk up as if he's readying himself to take off.

It's a pivotal moment in her life (not that she'll know this for weeks to come).

Jane is beautiful and charming and a wee bit spastic. Erik is tall and imposing and basically the best uncle she never knew she wanted. Their daemons are both mammals, but she doesn't hold it against them. They're also both desert animals, and that makes her feel a certain sort of kinship with them.

The workspace they use is so cramped that everyone's daemons can wander as they please without fear of straining their bonds. Erik's Celestia is incredibly talkative and likes to shadow whoever's doing what she deems most interesting on a particular day. She's much more friendly than Darcy would have expected from a coyote daemon, much more friendly than Erik, but then she sees that they have the same expressions: a sort of careful watchfulness when they look at those they're unsure of (Darcy, for the first few days until she proves her competence), a hungry sort of yearning when they're focused on their research or looking up at the stars, and the same fond indulgence when they look at Jane.

Jane's Brandir is the exact opposite of her. Well, okay, he's _gorgeous_ like she is: all soft brown fur and big eyes. But he's quiet where Jane's loud - a lot more like Bob than Celestia, graceful where she's a klutz, and he stays close to Jane. He's almost always underneath her feet, and it's funny to watch her stepping over and around him while she scribbles yet another calculation out on her whiteboards, his thick tail twitching back and forth while he quietly murmurs suggestions or corrections to her. Sometimes (very rarely), he will nudge her up onto the roof and flop over her hips, holding her down with his heavy cougar body and forcing her to get some sun, fresh air, and _out-of-lab_ time.

They know she's a witch (stupid internship application), but they don't say anything about it. Even though she can tell that they both want to, for, like, sciencey reasons. _Yes,_ she can feel the starlight on her skin and _yes,_ she's got senses that most people don't have, but Darcy, for all her studious bent, has never really felt called to study her magic.

But, the important thing is that they don't make a big deal out of it.

Except...

“We can keep a window open,” Jane says, absently, one week into Darcy's internship. Even after such a short time, the college student has already come to realize that “absent” is Jane's default setting while her brain is stuck on “research mode” (read: all the time), so it takes Darcy a minute to process the nonsequiter and understand the significance of the comment.

She sighs, and Bob shifts his weight on her shoulder. “Not necessary.”

“It's fine, Darcy. Really.”

“I know it's fine. If it becomes _not_ fine, I will tell you.” Darcy shuts her eyes and sucks in a deep breath, deliberately removing her hand from where it has automatically gone to her shoulder to rest over Bob's talons. Seeing Jane looking concerned, she musters up a small, insincere smile, “Seriously, Jane, we're cool. If we have a problem, we'll tell you. I promise, we are getting enough air.”

“I just know that it's sort of stuffy in here and thought that maybe Bob wouldn't want to be all - ” her awkward babble is cut off by Brandir's paw on her leg. Jane jolts, then smiles again: bright and unsure, “Sorry.”

“We just want you to be comfortable here,” Brandir says softly, startling Darcy yet again with his light tenor.

“It's cool,” Darcy says again, smiling gently. She feels Bob's beak start to comb through her hair and goes back to her work, hearing the click-clack of another keyboard after a minute, which means Jane is doing the same. They didn't get it, but that's fine, few people do.

Jane starts leaving one window open during the day, Darcy (and Bob) continue to ignore it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll do a daemon-key if people request it, otherwise it'll just be revealed in-story.
> 
> (I totally plan to do more of these 3 and 1's in this universe, with Darcy.)


	3. Person (Alien?  God?  Whatever...) the third: Thor

3\. Thor

“Why do you not fly? Are you lame?”

Darcy blinks at the screen in front of her, then turns so she can look at Thor and Bob. At Thor _talking to_ Bob. Bob appears to be as nonplussed as she is, which is good, but he also looks like he's about to answer, which is... surprising.

He extends his wings to their full (impressive) extent, then gives them one solid flap, stirring the air: “I'm not lame.”

“And yet I never see you fly. Do you not know how?”

Since the question seems to be devoid of malicious intent, Darcy decides not to intervene. The big guy's only been with them for a day, but it's already obvious that he's Not From Around Here (the lack of daemon and nearly overwhelming stench of magic was a pretty big tip off). Fielding his numerous, and occasionally _bizarre_ , questions is starting to feel like another part of her job while Jane is busy sciencing up the readings they took.

“I know how to fly.”

“He's a part of me, Thor. He's my daemon,” Darcy breaks in.

“Yes, I am aware of daemons and their function, but Bob is not tethered to you in the same manner that Brandir is to Jane, or Celestia to Erik.” He turns to her, face full of that strangely endearing earnestness that caused Jane to take him in (okay, the rockin' eight-pack might have had something to do with it, too). Seriously, the guy wears his heart on his sleeve, and his expression right now is eight kinds of sad, confused puppy when he tells her: “I do not _understand_ , Darcy.”

She smiles wryly, he's saying the same thing she's heard a hundred times in a hundred different ways. If she really thinks about it, it's not so surprising that a... whatever Thor is would find her as confusing as members of her own species (or sister species – whatever regular humans are to her).

Bob hop-flaps to her shoulder and starts to preen her hair, comforting both of them.

“Just because we _can_ do something, it doesn't mean that we _have_ to, or even _want_ to. Bob can fly, I can do magic. These are both true things, but they're not the _only_ things.”

Thor rocks back on his heels and, going by the troubled look on his face, looks like he's just been struck with the epiphany stick.

“Besides,” Darcy adds with a smirk, “we prefer to fly together.”


	4. Person the fourth: Clint Barton (and Laurence)

1\. Clint Barton & Laurence

Darcy and Bob are not really sure what they’re doing here.

 

Well, okay, they _know,_ theoretically, why their presence has been requested (commanded), but…  It’s like this: New Mexico happens, Thor happens, Thor’s weird family feud and the destruction of half of Puente Antigo _happens_ and then Thor leaves and Jane’s break-up/he-stood-me-up ritual involves a lot more science and a lot less ice cream than Darcy’s experience with rom-coms has lead her to expect.

 

SHIELD… _keeps_ happening.  It is an ongoing event.

 

After Thor (A.T.), Jane gets her stuff back, along with several new grants to finance her continued research that neither she nor Brandir remember applying for.  Erik, on the other hand, goes full-government.  Celestia slinks around looking by turns grim and sad and oddly triumphant, which Darcy takes to mean Erik cut a deal: his help for Jane’s (academic) freedom.

 

Only, it’s not _just_ Erik and Celestia that they want.

 

“I’m _twenty-two_ ,” Darcy says, staring at Agent Nondescript.  Even his daemon was nondescript: a dog, though it didn’t look like any breed she’d ever seen or heard of.  She was inclined to think it was a mutt, which was, if she thought about it, actually sort of unusual as dog daemons went.  “I’m the second youngest in my clan!”

 

He smiles slightly at that, “We are aware.”

 

Bob hunches a little on her shoulder, combing his beak through the hair behind her ear.  For some reason the way Agent says that makes her think that there must be a file, somewhere, with her name on it and everything she’s ever done _in_ it.  She continues, regardless, “There are other witches in this country, _older_ witches, witches who work with the government even!”

 

“None of them are read in on this situation.”

 

Darcy snorts, “If you think the clans are unaware, then you are a very poor government stooge.”

 

The Agent tilted his head, acknowledging her point, “There is a difference between knowing _of_ an event and being present for it.”  He raised a hand, stopping her mid-objection, “We are aware that you have an obligation to tell your clan of what has happened, we do not expect you to keep it from them.  Doubtless, someone has been dispatched to give a run-down of the situation to the Queens, _however_ ,” and here he narrowed his eyes at her, “you were at the site of both…openings of this ‘bridge’ and you were in close contact with Thor throughout his time here on Earth.”

 

“Yes, and?”

 

“We at SHIELD are not unfamiliar with how a witch’s abilities work.  Now that you’ve encountered the… _energy_ ,” Darcy would bet anything that he’d been about to say ‘magic,’ “that these Asgardians use, you would probably recognize it if you were to feel it again.”

 

“Probably?  The government wants to contract my witchy senses on the basis of a probability?”

 

The Agent smiled tightly, “We live in interesting times, Ms. Lewis.”

 

“Gods, monsters, and robots,” the Agent’s daemon said with a small laugh.  Her voice was surprisingly deep for such a slender creature.  “If ‘probably’ is what we have to work with, if ‘probably’ has a chance of stopping something like what happened here from happening again, then we are obligated to try.”

 

Darcy rubbed at her temples, careful not to dislodge Bob as her hand brushed past his feathers.  “The word ‘probably’ has ceased to sound like a word,” he muttered into her ear.  She chuckled at that before raising her gaze to study the Agent and his daemon, watching them watching her with identical serious expressions.

 

“I have to speak with my Queen,” Darcy said finally, “before I can commit to any action that draws my clan into a closer relationship with the United States Government, but I hear your request and will consider it.”  The formal language felt odd and weighty on her tongue, but she’d trained for this sort of thing – though she hadn’t really thought she’d get to _use_ her degree for another couple of centuries.

 

“Understood,” he passed her a card with only a number and the name ‘Coulson’ on it, “We’ll be in touch.”

 

After that, things were moving so fast it felt like her feet hadn’t even touched the ground.  The two American Queens, upon being debriefed by the government on the situation, called a clanmeet for the North American clans and even invited representatives from the European and Asian clans.  Darcy’s degree got a helluva workout as she was forced to give a full run-down on the situation to a very large group of very concerned witches and their Queens.

 

Much speech.  Such scrutiny.  Wow.

 

The Queens conferred, even the Asian clans setting aside their squabbles in the interests of making a harmonious decision regarding this event.  Not even the oldest of the witches could remember the last time gods had walked the Earth, but some of their mothers and grandmothers had passed down stories, stories which were now being brought out and shared and picked over for every bit of usable, useful knowledge.

 

It all made Darcy’s head spin, but the final decision of the meet nearly sent it flying off and away: she was to work with SHIELD (an organization that was, apparently, GLOBAL and not States-based) and report to the Queens, but while she was with the agency she was to represent the interests of _all_ the witches.

 

Darcy’s eyes had near popped out of her skull at _that_ little tidbit: “But I’m twenty-two!  And American!  I’ve never even been outside the Americas!  I can’t even speak Russian!  And I’m _twenty-two!_ ”  She knew, intellectually, that most humans would be protesting their maturity at her age, but she was practically an infant in terms of experience as far as witches were concerned.  She hadn’t even had her first love yet!

 

“You are young,” Queen Jeanne allowed, “but you are bright and untarnished.  In this case your youth makes you better suited to the task at hand.  You do not have the grudges that many of us build up, nor the arrogance to assume that you can solve any problem yourself.”  Seeing that her clan member was not soothed, Jeanne sighed, “We do not expect you to do this alone, child.  We have made you our voice among the humans, but we do not expect you to try and be breath and body as well.  We will be here, and you have but to call out to us to be answered.”

 

That was…surprisingly comforting.

 

But still head-spinny.

 

And it was what had led to here, and now, a witch in a government-funded bunker that ran nearly two miles beneath the surface, putting who knew how many layers of concrete and brick, earth and metal between Darcy and the stars.

 

All so they can watch a glowing box.

 

Yeah, Darcy doesn’t get it either.

 

To be fair, the box is magic (“It radiates energy across spectrums known and unknown,” Erik said, frowning.  “Eh, you say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to,” Darcy shrugged), and _powerful_.  Frighteningly so.  The humans call it ‘the cube,’ but in her communiqué with the clans, Darcy refers to it as ‘The Glowy Box of Doom and Dark Starlight.’  She tried to explain the difference between how starlight, _their_ starlight, felt and how the box makes her feel, but two minutes in Erik and the other scientists had started throwing around phrases like “dark matter” and “energy sink” and “localized white hole” and Darcy made a strategic retreat.

 

She spends most of her time in the rafters of the cube room.  It’s fifty or so feet less distance between her and the stars, the _real_ stars.

 

“I hate this place,” Darcy mutters.

 

“Fly tomorrow?” Bob offered.

 

Darcy instantly sat up, face brightening, “Yes!  Lets do that!”

 

There was a sigh from somewhere above and to her right, “Selvig’s doing an important experiment tomorrow, Fury’ll want you here.”

 

Neither Darcy nor Bob reacted to the sudden appearance of Clint and his Pharaoh Eagle-Owl daemon, Laurence.  In spite of the agent’s numerous attempts, he could not surprise them.  Even with the near overwhelming inferno of the cube, they could still feel the flickering candle-sense that indicated a human and their daemon.

 

Plus, they’d had days to get used to the odd agent.  Darcy might be there to watch (and sense – _feel_ had too many awkward connotations) the cube, but from what she could tell, Clint was there to watch the _everything_.

 

“Bah humbug,” Darcy muttered.  “How mad do you think Agent would be if I started sleeping on the roof?”

 

Clint settled down beside her, Laurence perched on his shoulder, “Coulson doesn’t do ‘mad,’ he does ‘disappointed.’  Although, in your case it might be more ‘perplexed’ with an option on ‘reluctantly amused.’”

 

Darcy grinned, “D’you think I can get a ‘scandalized’ out of the roof thing?”

 

Laurence answered with a scoff, “To be scandalized, you have to be at least a little surprised by something.  Coulson doesn’t do ‘surprise.’”

 

She hmm’d in response and settled her chin on the middle bar that enclosed the catwalk, sitting in silence with the two for another few minutes.  Startlingly, it was Bob who broke their quiet reverie:

 

“You could see more easily from two vantage points.”

 

Both witch and man stiffened, Darcy tilting her head to give Bob the stink-eye.  They could tell that Clint and Laurence were Separated, they could feel the energy stretched between them, but she had _thought_ that they had agreed on not bringing it up.  Humans could be kind of strange about that sort of thing, even though it had been a practice for as long as daemons had been around.

 

They used to call them _Shamans_ , some of the older witches still did, though the practice of Separation was no longer required for any jobs, religious or otherwise.  Darcy had sort of expected to run into more Separated agents once she started to understand just how big SHIELD was, and how it operated, but so far she had only sensed four, maybe five.  Then again, it was a large complex and an even larger organization, who knew?  Maybe they had a surplus of Separated agents hanging out in a special fortress.

 

All the same, humans didn’t see Separation the same way witches did, which made Bob’s choice of conversation starter…awkward.  Clint was still sitting beside her, so she was going to tentatively take that as a good sign.

 

And then Bob opened his big fat beak _again:_

 

“It would give you an advantage,” he pressed.

 

“I’m his _daemon_ not his _advantage_ ,” Laurence hissed in return.

 

Clint’s shoulders went deliberately loose.  “Gets lonely up here, sometimes.  I like the company.  It’s better than talking to myself,” he joked.  “Besides,” he said, giving them the side-eye, “Bob almost never leaves your shoulder, so it’s not like you’re one to talk.”

 

“Okay, first off, I didn’t say anything!  Bob did!  Second…” Darcy trailed off, “I didn’t really have a second point.  Bob and I are just…Bob and I.  We’ve never been apart.  I mean, we _can_ , it’s not like I’m a defective witch, we just… don’t want to.”  She hunched her shoulders a little.  She felt like she’d just exposed a weakness to a predator.  Clint, friendly as he was, was still an _agent_ , and while they might be working together now, the witches and the rest of the world didn’t exactly have a history of always seeing eye-to-eye.  Plus, she knew she was sort of…unusual amongst her kind.  The clans were rotating, sending a different daemon (usually a Queen’s) to check on her every three days, but Bob never left her side.

 

But Clint, when she turned to look at him, was smiling at her.  “I don’t want to, either.”

 

“So, we just…don’t,” Laurence finished.

 

Darcy smiled back, a little tentatively, “It’s mostly that Bob doesn’t like flying alone.”  The _neither do I_ was silent, but Clint was an agent, she was sure he could pick up on it.

 

He gave Bob a considering look, then twitched the shoulder Laurence was on, making the owl mantle and hiss.  “Room’s small, but you guys could get enough clearance to have some fun.  How ‘bout it?”

 

Bob shifted from foot-to-foot, “Laurence?”

 

The owl sighed.  “Call me Laurie,” he instructed, before diving off Clint’s shoulder and between the bars of the catwalk with a small shriek.  Bob followed him a moment later with a cry of his own.

 

Darcy and Clint chuckled at the scientists’ startled reactions, then watched their daemons as they swooped about the room.  It was nice to sit, and watch, knowing that neither of their shoulders’ would be bare for very long.

 

And that was ok.  Even if nobody else got it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry this took so long! Hopefully the length of the chapter sort of made up for it. NGL, this chapter...did not go where I expected it to. Originally this was gonna be MUCH shorter and with Natasha, not Clint. Somehow, though, THIS is what happened. I know it seems kinda shippy, there at the end, but please know that that was NOT my intention. I mean, feel free to read it as pre-shippy Clint/Darcy, or as platonic Clint & Darcy...it's up to you, dear reader.
> 
> Yes, I still have headcanons and ideas for this universe. No, I do not know when (or if) I'll get to them. Questions, comments, concerns? Lemme know!


End file.
